music

My dear friend and Certified Clinical Nutritionist, Robin Nielsen wrote and sings this inspiring and uplifting song – it’s just beautiful and so much fun! She shares:

This song and music video is for you. Inspired by Tina Maze, the beautiful 2014 Winter Olympic Gold Medalist who made a music video about her journey to Gold, Marianne Williamson’s poem “Our Deepest Fear”, and all of my beautiful clients over the years, I wrote this delicious song with my sons, Nick and Duncan Nielsen to inspire women to tap back into their own magic, and shine no matter what their age.

Robin has helped “thousands of women of all ages regain their health and get the twinkle back in their eyes” and she has a lovely message for us:

“You’ve Got the Magic” was written and produced for all of us. It’s time to ask for what we want and discover the beautiful goddess within. Enjoy this fabulous life no matter what, and let your inner light shine bright as an inspiration to everyone. I invite you to rekindle your magic and open all the “love letters” that come your way everyday.

Wishing you joy, grace, beauty and lots of pleasure. Please share with every beautiful woman you know.

Enjoy the uplifting song and the really fun video! I keep watching it and smile the whole way through. I’m also so in awe of someone being able to sing and produce a song and video like this! Wow!

We have been friends since I first became a nutritionist and met when we both volunteered to do speaker support at the National Association of Nutrition Professionals /NANP (www.nanp.org) conference. We were later invited to serve on the board of directors and Robin went on the become President of the board, while I served as VP (and later as President).

During production of the video, Robin reached out to her friends and colleagues asking for a short video clip of us having fun and enjoying life. I sent in a clip and I’m actually featured in the video. How fun! See if you can spot me!?

The science shows that lavender and other flowers are very helpful for anxiety. A clinical study from Rutgers University, found that when they gave subjects flowers, they had 100 percent positive result in their emotions.

Lavender has been studied both as an aromatherapeutic agent where you have these small molecules in the volatile fragrance that go right into the olfactory lobe and then start modulating all these different pathways in the brain. Now there are many different ways of looking at this. There’s actually research in the animal model specifically on it being serotonergic, meaning boosting the serotonin levels or preventing their turnover so they last longer, but the reality is there are so many other mechanisms that have been identified. For example, it inhibits what is known as a voltage-dependent calcium channel in a way similar to the drug Pregabalin, also known as Lyrica. And then there’s probably 10 or 20 other different ways in which is likely modulates traditional drug targets in the brain and that’s because the brain is so complex. We’re dealing with hundreds of different biomolecules, many of them classified as neurotransmitters that are making the magic of the chemistry of our brain-produced emotions and feelings so I don’t ever imagine we’ll ever fully understand how it works.

Here is more information on the Rutgers flowers study, that offered convincing evidence that flowers may be potent mood elevators. I really love this one! How did you feel the last time you received flowers? And when did you last give someone flowers?

common mental disorders like anxiety and depression “should be considered as a form of non-communicable disease,” like obesity “preventable through the modification of lifestyle behaviors, particularly diet” and exercise.

We’ve now seen data from right around the world right across every continent and across age ranges, showing that diet really does matter to the prevalence and incidence of depression and anxiety.

This is the ATA blog post I mentioned: Five Ways the New ATA Hypothyroidism Guidelines are Bad for Thyroid Patients

Music has mood benefits. I blogged about this in this Anna Clendening post. Check it out to see the links to the research and hear Anna sing.

Grab your copy of “Top of the World ” song here. This is your own copy of my custom song co-created by me and Amma Jo and sung by the lovely Amma Jo. I want this to be an inspiration for you! And as someone said during the first season: “a bouquet of hope.” Because you deserve to feel on top of the world all the time! Enjoy!

And stay tuned for my interview with Amma Jo later in the summit.

Do you sing or play a musical instrument? How does it make you feel? Does it help with anxiety, depression, stress?

Have food changes helped your anxiety, depression, stress?

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here www.theAnxietySummit.com

Anna is a very talented 20 year old young woman who recently performed on America’s Got Talent 2014. Her singing was just beautiful and you could hear the raw emotion in her voice.

Being on this big stage was quite something for her – she’s been suffering from anxiety and depression since she was 16. A few months ago she was bedridden and having panic attacks. She said: “my mind had given up on me. I didn’t see a future. I didn’t want to be here anymore and I felt so bad about myself.”

She was able to turn things around dramatically with therapy and music.

During her audition, judge Howie Mandel shared: “I also suffer from an anxiety disorder – I have OCD.” He also said: “There isn’t anyone alive who doesn’t need help at some time and the world is here for you.” After her song, Howie was very kind and went and hugged her. He also said this: “life is filled with peaks and valleys, you have experienced a lot of valleys. Tonight, young lady, you are on a peak.”

I would have to agree and I’d like to say “bravo Anna!” Watch her performance here….

I’ve got three other comments on this: the stigma of mental health, the wonderful effects of music for mood and encouragement to look in to the powerful effects of food and nutrients.

The stigma of mental health

I commend her for being open about her anxiety and depression. There is a great deal of stigma around mental illness but I had no idea how bad it was. I was very surprised to see all the cruel and insensitive comments on the youtube video. Here is one example:

Couldn’t leave her bed? What a joke. You didn’t see this kind this stuff 50 years ago. It was called responsibility and accountability. She was obviously validated and enabled by her parents. Society today substantiates this crap. It’s called life, and everybody has challenges and feeling they need to overcome, get over it. I bet she’s drawing a nice little social security disability check, too. Its pretty sad that she has such self pity. She is very attractive, talented, not overweight, racially advantaged, has loving parents. She needs to visit a children’s cancer ward or burn ward and get a grip as to how truly blessed she is.

I say this to Anna: “Just ignore these naysayers. You did good and the more of us who talk about it the more awareness we’ll bring.”

A 10-week group music therapy project was designed to determine whether music therapy influenced quality of life and social anxiety for people with a severe and enduring mental illness living in the community. Ten one-hour weekly sessions including song singing, song writing and improvisation, culminated in each group recording original song/s in a professional studio.

This is what they found:

music therapy gave joy and pleasure, working as a team was beneficial, participants were pleasantly surprised at their creativity, and they took pride in their song.

refreshed, comfortable, light-hearted, relieved, and relaxed, they felt less tense and confused and their mood improved. The level of cortisol, a salivary stress marker, decreased after singing. The same tendencies were shown regardless of whether or not the subjects liked singing ! (this is my exclamation point)

I say this to Anna: “Good for you for finding music! I wish you all the best in AGT 2014!”

The powerful effects of food and nutrients

I would also like to encourage Anna and anyone with anxiety and depression to look in to the powerful effects of food and nutrients. Here are just a few of the topics we covered on the recent Anxiety Summit:

I say this to Anna: “I’d like to encourage you explore these and other biochemical approaches – so you can have zero anxiety and depression.”

And I say this to Howie: “I’d like to encourage you to also explore these and other biochemical approaches for eliminating your OCD.” In this blog post about Charlize Theron I talk about how GABA, tryptophan, 5-HTP and/or inositol can end OCD and obsessive thoughts and behaviors.

I am musically “challenged” and can’t sing to save my life so while this is all very interesting to me, it’s not something I have experienced first hand. I’d love to hear from you.

Do you sing or play a musical instrument? How does it make you feel? Does it help with anxiety, depression, stress?